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About this blog: Real power doesn't reside with those who make the final decision, but with those who decide what qualifies as the viable choices. I stumbled across this insight as a teenager (in the 1960s). As a grad student, I belonged to an org... (More)

About this blog: Real power doesn't reside with those who make the final decision, but with those who decide what qualifies as the viable choices. I stumbled across this insight as a teenager (in the 1960s). As a grad student, I belonged to an organization where people didn't prepare for meetings and then spent 3-5 hours speculating and arguing about what were the facts, followed by 4-6 hours in subsequent meetings trying to remedy those mistakes. When I became president, I got meetings down to 1-3 hours by investing many hours in preparations. My professional career focused on creating computerized tools to support decision-making, including dealing with missing, ambiguous and false information. I moved to Palo Alto in 1983, and became active in local issues in the early 1990s through participation in workshops and hearings on the Comprehensive Plan and in neighborhood issues. I have since served on multiple official citizen advisory groups. I served on the Barron Park Association Board 1994-2013, including 6 years as president. The focus of this blog will be framing questions and explaining perspectives, starting with mine as a resident but encouraging others to share theirs. For "I'm right, you're wrong," go elsewhere. (Hide)

Why the City doesn't hear residents' perspectives? It doesn't want to (part 3 of 3)

Uploaded: Dec 6, 2013

This recognize some promising, albeit understated, reactions of several of the Commissioners to a bad Staff report. The previous parts of this series addressed persistent problems that discourage and suppress public input.

This blog entry is intended to serve as a foundation for comments from people who have actual experience trying to participate as members of the public--for them to comment on that experience and/or to make suggestions. Part 1 (Web link)addressed the problems of public participation over a sequence of meetings. Part 2 (Web link) addressed the problems of participating effectively at a single meeting.
This split is both for length and to allow more focus in the comments by segregating them to the different aspects (hint, hint, hint).

The meeting that occasioned this essay was the November 13 Planning and Transportation Commission hearing on what should have been a mundane issuethe Matadero-Margarita Bicycle Boulevardbut it could just have well be a host of very similar meetings that I and many others have been involved in.

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The problem is an institutional one, a combination of a long-established culture, practices and procedures. Mentions of individuals is to be only to make examples more concrete. Various individuals--on Staff, the Council and various Commissions--have expressed their awareness and serious concern about some of this in private, but their public behavior reveals little of this.

The deliberations opened with one Commissioner (Panelli at 1:31) expressing dissatisfaction with the Staff report, that it failed to adequately define the problem, to give a sense of how big the problem was (for example, magnitude of bike traffic), and to state what was expected to be achieved (for subsequent evaluation of success/failure). Before you say "D'uh", recognize that this is contrary to the established culture. A complaint I have heard from multiple Council members is that they are expected to give (pro forma) thanks to Staff for their work, regardless of what they think of the quality of that work (Everyone gets a trophy simply for participating).

In subsequent comments, that Commissioner (Panelli at 2:29) reiterated and expanded on those criticisms, including citing the absence of alternatives.

Other Commissioners expressed clear skepticism and dissatisfaction with the analysis underlying the recommendation.

At least one Commissioner (Martinez at 1:45:40) mentioned the importance of accurately reporting public input. This may have been an acknowledgement of a speaker's point that the Staff presentation presented an idea (the "Chimalus Greenbelt", from Part 1) in a purely positive light, when it was in fact controversial. It may also have been triggered by differences between what was in the main body of the Staff report and the collection of comments from the public outreach sessions in Attachment A. Note: Not that long ago, it was typically for Staff reports to contain only heavily filtered public input that supported the Staff recommendation.

Several of the Commissioners recognized that the safety improvements that could be made were limited, and were starting to ask the policy question of whether this should be officially designated a Bike Boulevard. However, this went nowhere because of misconceptions created by deficiencies in the Staff report (discussed in Part 2). For example, one Commissioner (Michael at 2:15:40) said the proposal was a significant improvement, but not safe (he had biked to the route) and later worried that it would create "an illusion of safety" (> 2:19).

So potential commenters, what do you think are the actions that individual Council members and Commissioners could undertake to encourage meaningful public input?

----Footnotes----

1. To see for yourself parts or all of this item of the PTC meeting (not that I recommend it), see the archived Webcast (Web link) with this agenda item starting at minute 55 and lasting almost 100 minutes. Public comments (6) begin at 1:14:45. The Commissioners comments begin at 1:31.

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